Dorothy Day Quotes

I have everything, yet have nothing; and although I possess nothing, still of nothing am I in want.

Holy poverty confounds cupidity and avarice and the cares of this world.

I am a man who has made a great deal of money, and I haven't got a great deal. This is because I give it no value, and a certain Christian precept is something to be lived by, and so forth.

As for the spirit of poverty, I do not remember any moment when it was not in me, although only to that unhappily small extent compatible with my imperfection. I fell in love with Saint Francis of Assisi as soon as I came to know about him. I always believed and hoped that one day Fate would force upon me the condition of a vagabond and a beggar which he embraced freely. Actually I felt the same way about prison.

The good Bishop of Assisi expressed a sort of horror at the hard life which the Little Brothers lived at the Portiuncula, without comforts, without possessions, eating anything they could get and sleeping anyhow on the ground. St. Francis answered him with that curious and almost stunning shrewdness which the unworldly can sometimes wield like a club of stone. He said, 'If we had any possessions, we should need weapons and laws to defend them.

None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty.

He who possesseth little is so much the less possessed. Blessed be moderate poverty!

Why grab possessions like thieves, or divide them like socialists when you can ignore them like wise men?

It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little.

But I have been in some very beautiful churches, then I've looked outside and seen people starving to death.

Grant me the treasure of sublime poverty: permit the distinctive sign of our order to be that it does not possess anything of its own beneath the sun, for the glory of your name, and that it have no other patrimony than begging.

Real freedom is having nothing. I was freer when I didn't have a cent.

Heaven must be an awfully dull place if the poor in spirit live there.

First and foremost, the monk should own nothing in this world, but he should have as his possessions solitude of the body, modesty of bearing, a modulated tone of voice, and a well-ordered manner of speech. He should be without anxiety as to his food and drink, and should eat in silence.

Manifest plainness, embrace simplicity, reduce selfishness, have few desires.

How rich, how happy is he who lives in poverty! He lives his days in wisdom, and sleeps in peace. Only he can be really happy, only he is so always!

Freedom from the wants of the body can help fulfill the needs of the spirit.

At stake are two different visions of faith, the Church of Caesar, powerful and rich; and the Church of Christ - loving, poor and spiritually rich.

If you want to live, go back to Christ. You are not Christians. Go back to Christ. Go back to him who had nowhere to lay his head. Better be ready to live in rags with Christ than to live in palaces without him.

I don't go looking for somewhere to spend my money. You can step on a tube of toothpaste for a week, if you have to. I spend what I need to and give it away.

I like keeping my mind as far away from money and the material aspects of my job as possible.

To need nothing is divine, and the less a man needs the nearer does he approach to divinity.

In my life, what I want and what I need are exactly the same. Anything in excess of needs is burdensome to me. You couldn't give me anything I don't need. I am penniless, but have difficulty remaining so. Several of my well meaning, well-to-do friends have offered me large sums of money, which I of course refused.

The Master said, “What a worthy man was Yan Hui! Living in a narrow alley, subsisting upon meager bits of rice and water—other people could not have borne such hardship, and yet it never spoiled Hui’s joy. What a worthy man was Hui!” (Analects 6.11)